This week CNN quietly canceled their new weekly show, King Charles, featuring Charles Barkley and Gayle King. If you blinked, you missed it. At least it lasted more than a few Scaramuccis.
The show seemed doomed from the start, especially given the turmoil that has faced the cable news giant in the last year and the change in leadership right around launch time. Furthermore, there wasn’t much point in the show’s existence other than giving Barkley another feather in his cap (or line item in his Warner Bros. Discovery contract). With ratings falling well behind its cable news competitors, it was an easy decision.
So now that Barkley’s cable news career has come and gone… what’s next for him and for sports figures trying to step into politics?
For Barkley, it’s not like the CNN failure is a negative reflection of his personality or star power. He’s still got a pretty decent day job. It was an experiment that didn’t work, but what really has worked for CNN in recent years? The network has been in meltdown mode for a long time. Cable news viewers are creatures of habit so a weekly show dropped out of the sky was always going to be a hard sell.
For CNN, the network could try again with another crossover mad lib in the hopes of something sticking to the wall. Who’s ready for a Shaq and Stanley Tucci travel series? How about Ernie Johnson at the anchor desk with Wolf Blitzer for election night?
The more interesting knock-on effect may be what it means for the political aspirations of one Stephen A. Smith. SAS has not been quiet about looking beyond ESPN and sports. But if he watched the rise and fall of King Charles, he may have learned that a dabble into politics isn’t really going to work for anybody. Either Smith is going to have to go all-in and really become a force in the political world, or it’ll be little more than a footnote on his media career.
Most of all, from a big picture perspective, it shows the uphill battle of sports figures talking politics. And this isn’t from a “stick to sports” mindset, “shut up and dribble” mantra, or press conference trolls, but actual television programming. Clearly cable news viewers didn’t embrace Charles Barkley and sports fans didn’t flock to CNN to watch him there either. So who did the show serve exactly?
If someone with the wit, candor, and popularity of Barkley couldn’t make it work on cable news, who from sports media really can? The political world is likely just too toxic, broken, and divisive for anyone from sports to make a difference in the mainstream. Of course, if anyone wants to take the Joe Rogan or Aaron Rodgers route to make an impact, maybe that’s a different story.
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